on a lonely string
by Bel S.W
Summary: In which Leia Organa finds peace, grows up, and waits (and it would have been easier if it had been on that order).


**Hey. So, I started writing this, like, 5 years ago (seriously) and found it when I was cleaning up my computer. In the spirit of the NY, I decided to finish old projects, so this is one of them. **

**It's mostly Leia. And warning for a tiny mention of rape, okay? **

**Enjoy ^^**

* * *

On her first week at the Organa's, Leia barely eats. The medics worry, tell Bail and Breha that, if it goes on, she's going to die. Her new parents try, but she's stubborn, even as a newborn, only eats when the hunger is too much and only sleeps when she's about to faint.

Leia is baby, so she doesn't know she's waiting for a different pair of maternal hands and a different paternal smile.

Leia also doesn't know, even if she feels, that in Tatooine, a little boy is walking the same path towards death.

Only when they feel their actions are hurting each other that they give in.

(never stop waiting, though, not really).

O.0.o.0.O

Strange things happen to Leia sometimes. Even as baby, sometimes she closes her eyes and the world slows down, and it shrinks, so much so, she can _feel _everything and reach her toy even if her arms can't.

Her parents tell her to stop, ground her, tell her it's wrong and that's going to get her in trouble.

With time, because Leia is only a baby and knows no other way, no other life, she obeys them and slowly, carefully, pushes bits and parts of her so deep into her soul she barely can reach them anymore.

Bail and Breha smile.

O.0.o.o.0.O

As a child, Leia wonders what it would be like to fly. She thinks, though she doesn't know why, it must feel like racing the wind and dancing in the rain and being free.

She runs from her tutors sometimes, hides from them (which is easy, because Leia has a gift of knowing where people are and where don't they look), and steals one of the new speeders.

The wind makes her long hair fall free from its perfect royal style and her smile is so wide, it almost hurts, and her heavy lovely clothes feel lighter and Leia feels she could do _anything_.

Her tutors find her, drag her away, and between Politics classes and etiquette lessons, that feeling slips away.

O.0.o.0.O

Leia loves Bail and Breha because it's hard not to, but she knows they are not her parents.

Leia knows this, because Bail's eyes are the wrong color (though she doesn't have an idea what the right color is), and there's no fire in his eyes, like there are in hers. But, mostly, Bail doesn't believe her dreams, and Leia knows her real father would (and that knowledge is half wishful thinking, half something else altogether).

And Leia does dreams, about her real mother, who's not Breha, because Breha is not as beautiful and not as kind, and Breha is not sad, because she has no missing pieces.

(and Leia knows the sad woman is her mother, because Leia knows a lot about missing pieces and that woman is one of them)

O.0.o.0.O

Leia is not afraid of Darth Vader.

She thinks he wears too much black and that his suit looks uncomfortable at best. She pities him and longs to know him and sometimes, she hates him too.

But she's never scared.

Bail is not blind, except he is, a little, to her, so he doesn't notice and, if Leia's dreams are filled with black suits, and fire planets and a sad, sad woman, he doesn't see and she doesn't tell him.

(because there are things Leia doesn't tell anyone, things she hides beneath her dreams, so well and so deep, she sometimes forgets them)

(and there's no one there to remind her)

O.0.o.0.O

On the other hand, Leia is deadly afraid of the Emperor. So much so, she gets angry and feels like destroying everything he touches and hates him, so she won't remember how afraid she is.

She defies him even if he doesn't know, steals secret information, aids the Rebellion, stares at his officers in the eye until they look away.

There's a great feeling in it, like every time the rebellion succeeds in something, Leia takes another piece from the Emperor. One day, she knows (because even when she only hopes, she tells herself she knows) she'll break him in pieces, until there's nothing left but an old, weak, pathetic man.

Leia hates the man for everything he's done and everything he plans on doing.

(she doesn't even know how much the Emperor took from her, and she hates him already)

O.0.o.0.O

Leia knows a lot about lying and control, and she loves overpowering people, proving them wrong, making them shut up and look away because they can't bear her strong eyes.

So she becomes a Senator. There's no feeling like it, throwing herself into causes and _winning_. But it is an Empire, so there's so much she can do and, sometimes, she gets tired of stubborn and immoral politicians and, in the secret part of her soul, wishes _she _was Emperor, only to make some people shut up for good.

But Leia loves freedom more than she loves power, and wants justice more than she wants control, so that's what she joins the Rebellion, why being a Senator is not enough.

Bail tells her they're fighting for peace, but she knows such a thing is impossible, only a dream, and that people wouldn't know how to be in a peaceful world. So Leia fights for something else – something she knows is possible, even if only for awhile.

Balance.

O.0.o.0.O

Once, when she is sixteen, Leia makes a mistake. The imperial officers don't know she's there, but it's only a matter of time until somebody finds her. She's locked inside one of the rooms, because, although she managed to send her father the information, she mistook one of the controls and now she's stuck.

She gets her blaster and doesn't pray, because Leia believes that the only person that will help her is herself.

(one day, years and years from then, she'll believe in another, in a boy with golden locks and desert eyes, and will pray to him)

(for now, she's alone)

The door opens slowly and the droids step into the room. She's hiding but it won't be long until they find her and she can't overpower all of them.

Still, she's about to try, when Darth Vader appears. He sends the droids away with a flick of his hand and stands there for a couple of seconds.

And then he leaves - and when he does, he leaves the door open and Leia doesn't think twice. He has his back to her, but she knows, simply _knows_, he can sense she's there.

There's a moment of silence where the world stirs and something inside of Leia breathes, for the first time in a long time, and maybe the balances tip, just a little.

Leia runs without looking back and Darth Vader walks as if he can't hear her steps.

O.0.o.o.0.O

Leia is not having a good day when she meets Luke Skywalker.

She's alone and tired - her planet is gone (and the screams are still impossibly high on her head), Tarkin keeps _looking _at her and Vader tortured her.

She has too much on her mind for a blue-eyed boy to register, but, somehow, against all odds, he does.

Because there's somethig about this boy, this naïve, sweet, brave boy, something she thinks she should know. It frustates her and she tries to push it aside, tries to think of escaping.

She celebrates as they're saved, grieves with Luke as Kenobi dies and makes herself become the Ice Princess of a planet that is no more.

(but there is moment, as they survive against all odds, with the boy, the smugler and the wookie on that trash compartment that Leia's heart soars, just a little, and it feels a bit like coming home - there's that moment she can't quite bring herself to forget)

O.0.o.o.0.O

When Leia is fifteen, an Imperial officer tries to rape her.

She was attending a senate council and went to get explore the place a little (find something against the Emperor). The corriders are impossibly dark and empty at night and he comes before she sees him.

She pushes, bites and fights, but he's twice her side, all of which is muscle. And he keeps _looking _at her, in a way that makes her angry and weak.

She's thinking about revenge and pain when, suddenly, he's pushed away from her.

And Darth Vader is there - and somehow, that's not much of a surprise - his hand up as the boy slowly suffocates.

They both watch for a couple of seconds after he dies and Leia cries, even if she'll deny it later.

"Thank you" she says, honest and true, like she so rarely is.

He turns to her and says, in a voice she thinks is supposed to be determined and angry, but sounds more broken and sad than anything.

"Never could stand that – reminds me of… it's just..." she thinks he sighs, then. "Go to your room, Princess. And-" he says that part so quietly she can barely hear him "be careful".

He whispers her name as she turns to leave and it feels impossibly broken.

(and maybe impossibly right, but that maybe slips away from her before she can grasp it)

O.0.o.o.0.O

Leia hasn't drawn since she was four years old.

She does not know why, why paper and pencil are pushed away from her, why Bail and Breha will not let her touch paint.

She vaguely remembers the week before her fifth birthday, when she had won the most beautiful paints she had ever seen and the way she had dragged the brush across the white paper.

Leia cannot, for the life of her, remember what she drew that day, but she knows she never drew again.

Leia remembers this fact as she watches Luke craddle his new hand and thinks of Han, somewhere, frozen in time.

When Leia grabs paper that night, her hand moves on its own accord and and when Lando calls her, she realizes there's a picture where the white possibilities were.

It's a dark, blurry picture she can barely understand, but she swears there is a mask on the floor and boy hovering over a body between the shadows.

She does not know why, but she thinks the boy is crying and, somewhere, in a very deep, secret part of her soul, she feels like crying with him.

Leia tears the picture into a thousand pieces and goes work on a plan to rescue Han.

O.0.o.o.0.O

Han Solo is the most frustating man Leia has ever known.

He annoys her, pushes her to her limits, asks for patience and calm and seems happy when he gets neither.

He makes her feel, so completely, like she had been holding back all her life.

(but, then, of course, she mostly had)

He kisses her and makes her world shake.

(and when he holds her, she never thinks of pain or anger or millions of screams)

And Han Solo, lively, frustating, arrogant, funny, unstopable Han Solo is frozen with his face in agony, a perfect picture of everything he's not.

Leia knows (_hopeshopeshopes_) that she will free him, that she will hold him, that he will. not. die.

Leia know this, but she still tells him she loves him, just in case he never gets to hear it.

(and she tells him honest and true, like she so rarely is)

He tells her he knows and his eyes leave her with a promise.

(of coming back, of holding her, of telling her he loves her, of not loving her if that's what it takes for her to move on)

O.0.o.o.0.O

Luke is the most important person of her life.

Leia never believed in those stories of love and sacrifice and how one person can mean more than the entire world. Growing up, there was not one person Leia wouldn't sacrifice for her fight – for balance.

She thinks about it, on the dead of night – on how she would let Han die and Chewie scream and how she had gambled her king and her entire planet for a falling-apart Rebellion.

(she lost and she doesn't even regret it)

Leia knows, like she knows nothing else, that she'll never sacrifice Luke. Not that boy who smiles at her and holds her hand even when he's not there, who makes her feel like she's never alone and smells of home.

(Leia doesn't know it, but she's terribly like her father in that knowlegde and it's both a blessing and a curse – the very best part of Anakin Skywalker was what destroyed them all)

Luke is part of her in ways she can't describe and she feels if he were to die, she'd die too.

It's the feeling she had when she met him, she realizes, years later, as he calls her across space and she hears him in her heart. She's been looking for this boy forever, before she even realizes there was something missing at all and, now she found him, she can never let him go.

(years later, Leia will realize Bail and Breha knew about this boy who is half of her and she'll always hate them a little for not telling her)

(she stops calling herself Leia Organa when that happens, even if other people still do. It's Leia Skywalker from then on, in the privacy of her heart, partly for her father, who would have told her, and entirely for Luke)

O.0.o.o.0.O

Luke would give up the world for a lot of people.

It's the best thing about him, the way he believes in people and forgives their mistakes and gives his heart entirely, without fear and restrain.

(good, kind, forgiving, and always sees the best in people – Luke is everything Bail had said she was those times he looked at her and didn't see her at all)

She thinks it will be their downfall – after they rescue Han and he holds to her like the blind man he is, she thinks of Luke, going back because he promised and wonders if he had damned them all by loving and saving them.

She wouldn't hate him if he did, she thinks. No matter what, she'll never hate him.

But Luke returns confident and strong, a glint in his eyes as he volunteers for a suicide mission and he smiles at her in a familiar way, even if a little different than normal – or maybe not, maybe just the same as always.

Later than night, as they plan what she hopes against all odds will be their last fight, she asks again "what's wrong?" because she knows him better than she knows herself and there's something in his eyes as he looks at the stars.

_I love you, _he says, and it's not the answer, but it's honest in a way she never heard and Leia is sure, as sure as she can possibly be, that she'll follow this boy to any hell he goes and if the world lets him down, shatters his hopes of good and kindness, she'll make the entire world burn in return, even as she holds him away from darkness.

_I love you too_, she says, and it's not enough, except it is, because he hears everything she doesn't say.

His eyes soften and he holds his secret, but it doesn't bother her – something tells her she already knows, anyway.

O.0.o.0.O

Things don't end like she expects them. All those years, she had been waiting for blood and pain and impossible screams – she had believed, more than anything, that destroying the Emperor was only possible if they destroyed themselves too.

Victory, as it comes, it's a lot calmer than she could have forseen. People are rejoicing, laughing and toasting as if they never lost anything, as if the party had come for no price.

Luke is quiet, but in the ways he gets sometimes, confident and in peace. It's more than she could have ever had hoped after everything had come to light, as, finally, the missing pieces fell together.

(and she can't even act surprised anymore – had she not heard the whispers, all those years? Felt the threads of the Force, even if she never called it that, felt herself broken and missing things she knew had been taken from her?)

(to be Luke's sister and Vader's daughter – only one brings her true happiness, but, she knows in her heart, none surprised her)

She lets Han with Chewie to enjoy themselves for awhile and goes sit by Luke. He takes her hand and doesn't speak, and, together, they watch Darth Vader's body burn.

She won't hate him, she thinks. She never feared the broken man, but she can't hate him, not after he saved Luke's life. Not after he gave her the Balance she had fought for so long, gave his life, so she wouldn't lose anybody else. Won't hate him, even if her heart soars with anger – hadn't he know? How had he not felt the thread that binded them, in blood and fate, as he tortured her and hated her?

(had he felt it as he saved her, again and again?)

Luke says his last words were for her and that makes her sad – she wonders how much he had loved them if losing them had broken him so deeply. She wonders if she could have loved him back if had she known all along.

(and here's the thing Leia will never admit to herself, not until beyond her death - only Luke will know, and, still, he'll never tell her. She had loved him, truly and honestly, even without any knowledge, because he was her father, because he never lied for her, because, through all he did, never did Darth Vader ever made her feel alone, improper or a disappointment)

Luke gets up suddenly, extends his hand for her. He smiles like the war hero he is, and his eyes tell her of a bright future. She takes his hand and promises herself they'll do it now – rebuild the world, slowly but surely, the things their father destroyed and the things that were already destroyed before that.

Balance is won, and she is not alone anymore (never again). Leia smiles and, though she can't explain why, feels as if she's racing the wind and dancing in the rain.

(she doesn't know it, but she feels it, that in Tatooine, the slaves are singing as rain falls for the first time in longer than anybody can recall)

(it's no ending, she knows)

O.0.o.0.O

Leia never heals and, somethings, she can never remember, never forgive.

But it's okay – she grows and learns and accepts and there are children, beautiful and powerful, like all Skywalkers are. They grow to fight their own battles and the world keeps turning, surely, uncaring for a broken princess of a planet that is no more.

(and that never was truly hers to begin with)

Luke is at her side, always, and Han will make sure she never holds back ever again. Her father watches, in the stars and in the fire, and, sometimes, she even smiles at him.

She stops waiting and goes on to live.


End file.
